ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the trajectory of the developing world and African debate on aging and intergenerational support from its inception in early 1980s to present. It highlights the major perspectives and concerns that have underpinned the discourse to date, including the recent central concern over economic insecurity and poverty in old age. The developing world debate on aging emerged in the early 1980s as a United Nations (UN)-led initiative, launched by the first UN World Assembly on Aging (WAA I) in Vienna in 1982. In the two decades since Vienna Assembly, the developing world has seen a steadily expanding body of regional and national research on older people and population aging. The principal concern about old age poverty became the central focus in the discussions at second UN World Assembly on Aging that took place in Madrid in 2002. Coming two decades after Vienna Assembly, the Madrid meeting aimed to assess the progress made in national responses to population aging.
